July 5th Meeting: Free Screening of "Terror Storm" by Alex Jones

If you have any doubts about state sponsored terrorism and the origin of the London Bombings, the Madrid Bombings, the WTC 911 bombings and many other bombings and attacks you will leave your doubts behind after viewing this film. Alex Jones, "Terror Storm" was first screened at the recent 911 Truth Convention in Los Angeles. This is the first cut and later editions will be edited. Some of the material included is right up to the minute. This movie would change the world if the world would watch. The PORTLAND PREMIER will be held at Laughing Horse Books' new location on NE 10th just a few feet north of Burnside. We'll meet at 6:30 pm, Wednesday July 5th at Laughing Horse Books. Sponsored by the Portland 911 Truth Alliance.

If I Only Had a Plane

By Jeff / Rigorous Intuition / June 28, 2006 Go to original. Strawman, going straight to the devil Strawman, going straight to hell - Lou Reed It hasn't been a month since Salon's Farhad Manjoo declared case closed on 2004 election fraud. (The abbreviated argument, via Sadly, No: "There may have been widespread election fraud in 2004, but what really gets me steamed is the zany conspiracy theory that it might have affected the election.”) But he's already back to slay another conspiracy dragon with "The 9/11 deniers." And yes, that's the implication: to dispute the finding of the Kean commission is to make yourself a fellow traveller with Holocaust revisionists. (Though truthfully, we need to be careful about what company we keep.) Is Gerald Posner glancing anxiously over his shoulder? The 28 year old Manjoo seems to be making a run for his title of Alpha Debunker. His prejudicial deference to authority, his selection and deselection of evidence, his strawmen and his sarcastic disdain for contrary thought should grease his way to great success. And conventional wisdom's eager-to-please houseboy has already come a long way since his 2000 graduation, "with apparently no advanced degrees in social science or political science." Predictably enough, Manjoo's representative text of 9/11 conspiracy is the flypaper Loose Change, which he calls "something like a film version of a highly contested Wikipedia page." (Suggesting a certain shallowness of thought Manjoo's wiki fixation runs deep, as demonstrated by his cut and paste blog, What I Learned on Wikipedia Today.) Manjoo's critique of Dylan Avery's work is almost wholly borrowed from Jim Hoffman's "Sifting Through Loose Change", and though he credits Hoffman, he also studiously ignores Hoffman's far more credible case for conspiracy. Following Salon's RFK Jr hit piece, Bob Fitrakis wrote that "Manjoo is much like the Tobacco Institute or the people they used to send around to show us film strips about 'Readi Kilowatt' back during the Cold War. They are individuals who have developed a cottage industry as debunkers and denialists. And in a society famed for Know Nothings an anti-intellectualism, of course an opportunist like Manjoo would come forward." True. And much the same could be said of Dylan Avery. The 9/11 movement remains a creature of the general culture that rewards style and flash over substance and reflection. The dumbed down is raised up, and a scattershot of distortions and faulty assumptions is too often mistaken for argument. (Avery even shares Manjoo's wikipedia fixation, citing it with authority in Loose Change.) Debunkers and disinformation artists aren't always found in the alphabet soups of intelligence agencies. Often, they're just working for themselves, trying to establish their names in whatever fields they've staked out by launching them into the prevailing winds. And frequently, Looking Out for Number One means you've got the Company's back whether you know it or not. Manjoo and Avery deserve each other. Now, how about the rest of us?

Can we do this in Portland?

Berkeley, Calif. wants vote on Bush impeachment By Jim Christie / Reuters / Jun 28, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Berkeley plans to give voters a say on a measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the mayor of this famously liberal California city said on Wednesday. A number of local governments across the United States have passed resolutions urging impeachment. But the Berkeley city council wants to be the first to put the issue directly to voters, Mayor Tom Bates said in an interview. "This is basically giving the people a chance to talk, to join the debate," Bates said. "The issues go way beyond impeaching the president. They go to safeguarding the Constitution." Cheered on by Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan, who has moved to Berkeley, the council voted unanimously on Tuesday to have the city attorney review the measure that would appear on the November ballot. Read full story here

Our Meeting This Wednesday June 28th

There will be a meeting at David's Church this Wednesday. Please note the time is at 6:30 p.m. Dave Morrison and Mike Shultz will present their findings from the just concluded 9/11 conference in Los Angeles. Some 1,200 people gathered at a Los Angeles hotel on the weekend for what organizers billed as the largest conference on the plethora of conspiracy theories that see the 2001 attacks on Washington and New York as, at best, official negligence, and at worst an orchestrated U.S. attempt to incite world war. The 9/11 American Scholars Symposium concluded in Los Angeles Sunday was extremely well received by the thousand plus in attendance. A Reuters article summarizing the event presented a reasonably balanced appraisal of the intentions and scope of the conference, mirroring a burgeoning climate of accurate 9/11 truth movement coverage. Alex Jones confirms the conference has been a huge success. C-SPAN covered part of the event (which it will rebroadcast several times this week), and various mainstream media outlets turned out to cover the event. David plans to show Alex Jones' new movie, which is approximately 2 hours long. Please plan to attend this presentation. For those who need the address e-mail Glen Owen at theknownuniverse @ yahoo . com or David Morrison morrison @ morrisonbooks . com

L.A. 9/11 Truth Conference Gets Fair Media Play

Conference a huge success, C-SPAN to air segments this week Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 26, 2006 The 9/11 American Scholars Symposium concluded in Los Angeles Sunday and was extremely well received by the thousand plus in attendance. A Reuters article summarizing the event presented a reasonably balanced appraisal of the intentions and scope of the conference, mirroring a burgeoning climate of accurate 9/11 truth movement coverage. Alex Jones confirms the conference has been a huge success. C-SPAN covered part of the event (which it will rebroadcast several times this week), and various mainstream media outlets turned out to cover the event. Reflecting a positive trend embraced by an earlier New York Times article, the Reuters report on the conference mainly sticks to the facts and avoids the scoffing, sneering tone of similar reports about 9/11 events we have seen over the last few years. The Reuters article has mainly been picked up by foreign news outlets. From previous experience we know that newswire gatekeepers, ostensibly operating out of London, selectively sideline sensitive stories and order them not to receive substantive nationwide attention. The Reuters piece has not been picked up by any US or European news outlet thus far. Publications such as Turkey's Zaman Online, South Africa's Independent Online, Qatar's Gulf News as well as Al Jazeera and Iran's Tehran Times all carried different versions of the original Reuters piece. Anyone looking for spin, please note this paragraph in the Reuters article: "The theories, derided by critics as wild and far-fetched, have mostly been confined to the Internet, talk radio and the alternative press." While this is generally true, Reuters fails to note that the 9/11 truth movement has encroached into the realm of mainstream media this year more than ever before, notably in response to Charlie Sheen's public stance back in March. Video footage of Charlie Sheen's appearance as well as a raft of other presentations and interviews with keynote speakers will feature in free video clips and extra footage for Prison Planet.tv subscribers over the next two weeks. Thanks to everyone who has helped to get the word out, the mainstream is being forced more and more to cover the majority, based-in-fact conviction that 9/11 was an inside job.

Urgent Message From Mike Ruppert (6/26)

Between the hours of 7:30 P.M. Sunday, June 25 and 7:30 A.M., Monday, June 26, the FTW offices were burglarized. Four interior doors were smashed with a sledgehammer. All seven FTW computers were transported to a central location in the building. Their covers were removed and they were also smashed with a sledgehammer. No other significant property was taken and there was no other damage to any other fixtures or furnishings. An active police investigation is underway with a named suspect. I do not believe that this incident was the work of the U.S. government. I do believe that this is the work of an organized meth ring that I prevented from infiltrating my business. As Dmitri Orlov has noted in Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century, when societies collapse, organized crime becomes much more assertive. As beautiful as Southern Oregon is and as happy as I am to be here, the challenges that will be facing all of us as Peak Oil hits are making themselves known. We have ordered new computers and should be able to retrieve or restore most of our data. However more than one hard-drive will require expensive high- tech recovery processes. In all probability FTW will not be able to upload to our website for one week from today. When we come back online I will have a more complete story with photographs. Please do not send emails. We cannot read them. Michael C. Ruppert Mike is asking that this message be distributed widely until he can get back online.

9/11: Missing Black Boxes in World Trade Center Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI

Story from Counterpunch 9/11: Missing Black Boxes in World Trade Center Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI By DAVE LINDORFF One of the more puzzling mysteries of 9-11 is what ever happened to the flight recorders of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center towers. Now it appears that they may not be missing at all. Counterpunch has learned that the FBI has them. Flight recorders (commonly known as black boxes, though these days they are generally bright orange) are required on all passenger planes. There are always two-a flight data recorder that keeps track of a plane's speed, altitude, course and maneuvers, and a cockpit voice recorder which keeps a continuous record of the last 30 minutes of conversation inside a plane's cockpit. These devices are constructed to be extremely durable, and are installed in a plane's tail section, where they are least likely suffer damaged on impact. They are designed to withstand up to 30 minutes of 1800-degree heat (more than they would have faced in the twin towers crashes), and to survive a crash at full speed into the ground. See rest of story at Counterpunch

Ground zero workers rally for federal aid

Link to origional page Hundreds of ground zero workers and several lawmakers asked President Bush on Saturday to send more help to ailing rescue workers. The workers, along with U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Vito Fossella, rallied at the World Trade Center site to ask for more government help for Sept. 11-related health problems. Several New York lawmakers sent a letter to the president asking for a meeting to discuss how the federal government can better help people who have been sickened by their exposure to dust at ground zero. The lawmakers said thousands have been sickened by working at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and need help paying medical bills and monitoring their health. Officials who run a city health registry say it's too soon to definitively link the illnesses to Sept. 11. Related: Village Voice - Truth Out Sick of being lied to by the EPA, 9-11 plaintiffs use the courts to force the answers they seek Related: "We were all lied to" - Anger builds over EPA’s 9/11 report Charges of a cover-up hit nerve with New Yorkers - MSNBC